worked her way
through impenetrable darkness; Tharn moved along her pathway speedily
and without faltering, Trakor following.

In ten minutes the cave lord covered the distance Dylara had required an
hour to travel. Abruptly he altered his course upward toward the forest
top, until, high among the smaller branches, he stopped and looked to
his nose for information.

Almost at once Trakor noticed a troubled expression carve itself on
Tharn's handsome face. "What is it, Tharn?"

His companion's lips set in a narrow line. "I do not know. Some strange
manlike creature with long hairy arms and legs surprised her here and
carried her away."

Moving slowly now, with many pauses, Tharn set out on the arboreal
pathway accompanied by the bewildered Trakor.

* * * * *

For nearly three full hours Tharn continued on through the middle
terraces. It took him a good part of that time to get some sort of
accurate picture of how that strange, hairy creature had regulated its
progress. The distance between marks left by its hands and grasping feet
seemed far too great for anything other than the most agile of monkeys.

So intent was Tharn on following the spoor, and so intent on Tharn was
his companion, that the first indication either had of danger was when
fully a score of spider-like forms engulfed them from the depths of as
many hiding places among the foliage.

The first wave swept the still inexperienced Trakor completely from his
branch, and he would have fallen headlong through space toward the
ground below had not one of the ambushers caught him by an ankle and
jerked him roughly back to a different type of danger. In a mad fury
that was half rage and half fear the youth struck out blindly with his
knife, killing three of his attackers and wounding several more before
he went down beneath the sheer weight of numbers.

It was Tharn who took the subduing! With the first rustle of foliage his
knife was in his hand and he met the onslaught of twisting, shrieking
spider-men like a rocky crag meets a storm-swept sea. Enemy after enemy
toppled into the void, their bodies torn by his keen blade of flint;
others went to join them with skulls crushed by superhuman blows or with
spines snapped like twigs. Early in the battle Tharn learned it was
useless merely to push them from the limb: they would fall a few feet
until some long sinuous limb would catch a lower branch and back they
would come to t